Thursday evening

Little boys and girls I apologise at the beginning of this post, for this Thursday night I was fortunate enough to drink some wines that you, poor ordinary creatures, can only dream about. Indeed, the evening was so good that we rounded it off with a 1997 aged grappa from Levi that you couldn't even dream about, it was that wonderful.

Step forward YT, whom I hadn't seen for about a month, who with his usual generosity, provided the majority of bottles (another friend, LK provided one as well) for our assortment of six in total to evaluate, appreciate and enjoy. My loyal reader well knows that YT and his kind wife MT are regular providers of unforgettable evenings with good food, great wines and excellent company, even including your scribe.

Many times before I have told you that good food does not have to be elaborate, just well-sourced and well executed; last Thursday conclusively proved this to anyone caring to look carefully enough. We had a simple green salad with a dressing that complemented, not dominated, the taste of the leaves, making it an invigorating start to a meal and preparing the palate for the main course. This again was simple but beautifully done, oven-roasted beans from the north of Greece, with tomato, onions and a bread crumb crust, simple but yummy, straightforward but utterly delicious.

Wine, wine, wine is always our clarion call when we meet at YT's place, and this time was no exception, with an exceptional Savatiano VIENTZI single vineyard 2016 to start with from Papayiannakos, then three vintages of Assyrtiko from Santorini (2012-11-10), then an amazing wine from southern France (Madiran 1995 Chateau Montus) followed by an Avaton 2002 from Gerovassiliou in Northern Greece.

Savatiano is, in my opinion, an outstanding Greek grape variety that has been dismissed for too long as uninteresting, even inferior, as it is the main variety used in Retsina, the pungent, occasionally offensively pine resin scented wine that's launched a million taverna meals for tourists - and, by the way, there is such a thing as good retsina. But Savatiano is special, and in good hands it can produce subtle, multi-layered, interesting wines; the Vientzi 2016 single vineyard wine is a supreme expression from very old vines (over 50 years old), very concentrated and fine, reminding me of a top Rhone white.

Of course the Assyrtiko Santorini wines were outstanding in some ways but very different, with the significant oxidation of the 2010 dominating the freshness and minerality of the area, the 2011 was subdued but more typical and the 2012 was showing all you would expect from this special island (zingy lemony paired with mineral notes) with a bit of age as a bonus. The 2010 was clearly on the way out - still all there but oxidising - but I still found lots to enjoy in it, a sentiment not shared by everyone present.

If the quality and style of the whites was attempting to make life difficult for the Madiran they failed -they just emphasised this exceptional wine's presence, allowing it to show its richness and complexity, its ripe red fruit character undimmed by age, layered, long and immensely satisfying but perhaps better on a cold winter's day to provide sunshine. The quality of Chateau Montus, well known now throughout the wine world, gives a clear signal of what can be achieved with passion, love, local grape varieties and hard work; Montus shows clearly why individual properties in the south of France (in this case south west, Gascony) must now be taken seriously, always, forgetting the big commercial concerns. This is the real deal!

Avaton is a Gerovassiliou wine from the North of Greece from a winegrower who, in my view these days, looks for the broad appeal rather than the exceptional, with this 2002 showing soft tannins, mature red fruits  and some complexity, a good wine from an exceptional stable, rather overshadowed by the sheer exuberance of the Madiran which preceded it. I find that, from a winemaker who has produced some great wines in the past, especially in Porto Carras during his tenure there, his wines today are always technically sound, well made, even interesting, but they are rarely truly exciting.

Then to finish, oh, to finish, a grappa from those sorcerers of this liquid, the Levi family (alas no longer around), an aged one being even more exciting than their normal concoctions, a drink so incredibly fine that it left many of us speechless. This was gentle, complex, a whisper yet at the same time loud, obvious but hidden, a subtle heavyweight with extreme finesse, in short a masterpiece of the art of making, then ageing, proper grappa and bottling it at the perfect moment. Astoundingly good stuff and the perfect way to end not only a meal, but this post.